Where is this data coming from?

Where is this data coming from?

Rationalizing

Thanks for all your comments from last week on startups going through multiple accelerators.

From the startup perspective, we received responses highlighting publicity, paid pilots, and choosing programs that did not include an equity component.

Others took a different view. One investor pinned it on the difficulty for B2B startups to sell into insurers, writing:

I think that many startups that are going B2B to sell to incumbents are finding it much harder than anticipated to complete sales due to the challenges in working with incumbents.

Paid pilots are one thing, but operationalizing is very different. In spite of all the talk of innovation by incumbents, I think it is still a challenge for most to actually engage with and purchase from startups beyond pilot. Second, in my experience, even if an incumbent decides to operationalize the legacy back office make it incredibly difficult to integrate with newer solutions. Legacy insurers’ IT stack is a mess and integration becomes near impossible I think in many cases.

Put all this together—long time to get to pilots, long time for decision from pilot to operationalize and really difficult integration—results in startups going through multiple accelerators.